Somewhere To Begin
by arianna99
Summary: Post-Cyberwoman. Owen is the one who comes to see Ianto first. A look at the ins and outs of their friendship, which mentioned Jack/Ianto, Owen/Ianto, Owen/Gwen, Owen/Katie.


**Somewhere To Begin**

Hi everyone. Please review. I'll beg. Anyway, this is my post-Cyberwoman wallow, because everyone needs one of those, right? Spoilers go up to Fragments, though, and while the main pairing is Jack/Ianto, it contains Ianto/Owen and mentions of Ianto/Lisa, Owen/Katie, Owen/Gwen and Owen/Tosh

It's not Tosh who comes to see him first, or Gwen, or even Jack. Jack knows he needs time to be able to look him in the eye without wanting to hit him or kill him or fall to pieces, sobbing.

It's Owen.

He just turns up one night at the doorstep with a six-pack of beer under his arm and the grimmest mutation of a smile Ianto's ever seen. He lets Owen in, shows him to the living room, and he doesn't even comment on the mess.

Owen hands him a beer and sits down wordlessly on the sofa. It's covered in Lisa's medical files, pictures, her clothes. Ianto still doesn't know what to do with the stuff. Owen either doesn't notice or magically grew a sense of tact when Ianto wasn't looking.

Lisa died a week ago.

Owen doesn't say a word when Ianto drinks his way through five of the six beers, and then knocks back about four glasses of cheap scotch. All his money went into taking care of Lisa. The stuff tastes like crap, but right now, the only thing Ianto wants is to forget.

He passes out before he can finish the scotch. Owen must have somehow carried him to his bed and gotten him under the covers, because he wakes up the next morning warm and sleepy in a cocoon of covers. His head is throbbing, but as he reaches blindly for the night table to check his clock, he finds aspirin and water.

He stumbles through his apartment, using the bathroom before seeing if there is anything at all in his fridge. There isn't, beyond a somewhat suspicious-looking cucumber. However, there's toast in the bread basket (cheap, commercial toast with no crust to speak of), and someone (must be Owen) put butter and jam on his table.

While the kettle sets about boiling water for tea (he can hardly think about coffee right now. Lisa loved coffee. Jack loves coffee), Ianto peers into his living room to take an inventory of the mess.

Not only are all traces of the alcohol gone, Lisa's clothes have also been folded neatly, the photos stacked in a separate pile from the medical files, and Ianto's suit, the one he'd been wearing that day, was gone from the crumpled heap it had been in the corner.

There's a note on the coffee table. _I burned the suit. Don't think you'd still want it. Go shopping. _Brief and insensitive, the way he knew Owen, scrawled in a spiky, nearly illegible blatant misuse of Ianto's favourite fountain pen. He does go shopping, even though he feels like he shouldn't be in public, like everyone can see what's happened to him, like they know, like everyone's eyes are at his back, pointing and staring.

Perhaps it's also because he still hasn't changed out of his sweat pants or brushed his teeth, and you can smell the alcohol and sweat on him.

But Ianto finds himself not caring.

Owen turns up again two nights later, doesn't bother ringing the bell, just uses the key under the mat. It's a stupid place to put a key, but seeing the things aliens can do somewhat lessens Ianto's fear of earthly crime. If someone really wanted to get in for a reason beyond petty theft they wouldn't bother with a key.

Ianto is sprawled on the leather armchair, watching _Love Actually. _It was Lisa's favourite. She loved Christmas. It was her favourite holiday.

"What are you doing here?" Ianto asks, voice hoarse. He hasn't talked to anyone since it happened.

"Checking up on you." Owen says, sitting down on the sofa in exactly the same place he sat two days ago. He hasn't missed much of the movie; Keira Knightley is just getting married to All You Need Is Love.

Ianto doesn't answer until Owen laughs at Hugh Grant as PM blatantly ogling his assistant. "You should hate me," he said. "I don't deserve being checked up on."

"Well," Owen says, eyes still firmly riveted on the screen, "You're not my favourite person in the whole world, but if no one checks up on you you'll start slitting your wrists or something."

Ianto sighs and turns back to the screen.

-

The fifth time Owen comes, Ianto's crying.

He's watching Casablanca this time, or he was, but it's frozen to Ingrid Bergman telling Sam to play their song. Ianto is staring at the screen blankly, tears streaming down his face with no visible end in sight.

Owen takes his usual place on the sofa and waits.

When Ianto starts talking, he sounds even more wrecked than he did that first night in the hub. There's no anger left in his voice, that's the difference. Perhaps they had been crueller than they thought, taking away Ianto's right to anger and leaving nothing but guilt and grief.

"It was the first time we went out," he says. "I'd invited her to the new James Bond, but…but Torchwood and all, and by the time the crisis was dealt with we'd missed it. So…so I took her home and we watched Casablanca on my TV, because she'd never seen it, and she cried at the end, and I brought her home, and I kissed her, and I don't think I can ever watch this movie again."

"Yes, you can," Owen says.

Ianto's head jerks away from the screen to stare at Owen. He needs a haircut, Owen thinks absently. "It'll hurt, at first, but you'll be able to. And after a while it won't hurt as much, and then it won't hurt at all, and you'll just have the good memories. She wouldn't want you to forget her, or avoid the memories. She wouldn't want you to not do things because of her, either."

Ianto nods, and his eyes flick back to the screen. He still can't make himself press play.

For the first time in…well, ever, that Ianto's seen, Owen gets up and walks over to the kitchen. He assumes Owen was there that first night, but this is a break to routine. He's opening cupboards and pulling things out, and it makes Ianto uncomfortable. He doesn't get up anyway.

He still hasn't pressed play when Owen returns with two cups of steaming cocoa. He wonders, briefly, before he takes a sip, whether it's retconned, or poisoned. He drinks anyway.

It's delicious.

"Katie sometimes got these cravings," Owen says. "And one of her favourite things was cocoa. So I made it whenever I could, to make her happy, especially towards the end."

Ianto wonders if, maybe, just maybe, he's misjudged Owen. They drink up in silence.

Once he's finished, Ianto presses play.

-

Almost every time Owen comes, Ianto's watching something. He doesn't know how else to fill his days, and he's not ready to do something productive with Lisa's stuff yet. As time goes on, Owen's visits grow more frequent, and he eventually brings along his own movies. Ianto's not really ready for blood and gore yet, which Owen understands very well.

He brings other things, instead, the Princess Bride and every Steve Martin flick he can find. He draws the line at High School Musical, though. That's pretty much okay by Ianto.

Theoretically, Owen knows Jack must have stopped by by the time Ianto's first month of sabbatical is up. Practically is another thing, especially when he comes in just when they're starting on Pride and Prejudice (which is so bad for his image there are no words).

Ianto's on the sofa that night, and Jack sits down next to him, not paying Owen any attention. He pulls Ianto close, and Ianto, contrary to all of Owen's expectations, snuggles into Jack, laying his head on Jack's chest. Not for the first time, Owen wonders what exactly that _thing _between them is.

Later, once Jack's carried a sleeping Ianto to bed and they leave his apartment together, Jack says, "He needs physical contact. It helps."

"I know," Owen says, even though he can't quite shake the feeling that Jack is explaining away something that doesn't need it.

-

There's also the night Owen comes in while Jack and Ianto are having a screaming match right in the middle of the living room. "Why don't you just fucking retcon me?" Ianto's yelling, face inches from Jack's.

Jack stares at him a moment before grabbing his face and kissing him, hard.

Ianto pulls back after a second, and says, "So you're keeping me for the sex. That's mature of you."

"I'm keeping you because you're good at what you do and we need you on the team."

"I'm not part of the bloody team, Jack. If you want a part-time shag, at least be up-front about it."

"Shut up," Jack says, insinuating himself in Ianto's personal space. "You're not a part-time shag. You hate me right now, and that's okay. You're also lonely and frustrated and you know I'm good at solving that."

The two of them stare at each other for a moment, before Ianto grabs Jack by the shoulders, slams him into the wall and devours his mouth ferociously. Jack gives as good as he gets, and Owen edges out of the door silently.

-

Once Ianto comes back to work , their friendship melts away. Ianto draws closer to Tosh as Owen and Gwen begin their ill-advised affair. Then Jack sweeps Ianto off his feet, and Diane turns up.

If Ianto had known where Owen was after she left, he would have gone to see him, but none of them know.

It's only when Jack's gone that they renew their sort-of friendship, because they're both alone again now (not that Owen needs to be, something Ianto refrains from pointing out, because really, the signs Tosh is sending are painfully obvious enough all on their own).

The reason they get along so well is that Owen pointedly does not ask about Jack, and Ianto offers no comment on Owen's dating habits. They fall back into their movie habit, but this time, there's James Bond and Rush Hour and it's better. Because neither of them want to talk about their respective heartbreak.

It doesn't stop Ianto, on the night that's six months after Jack first kissed him, from grabbing Owen by the shirtfront the minute he comes in through the door and bodily pushing him into the bedroom. Owen has no complaints, because seriously, Ianto's _good._

They don't bother talking the morning after, because there's nothing to talk about. They don't love each other, they don't even need each other. They just happen to be there, stepping stones on the way to getting over all the shit that's happened to them.

Owen still kind of resents it when Jack comes back and starts taking Ianto out and being nice. But Ianto gets his snark back, and starts looking happy and glowy, and seriously, Owen doesn't even want to go there.

Except that one night, after he's died (god, that's wrong. That is so, so wrong), when he comes back to the Hub because he's seen all his DVDs and he doesn't want to hit the town because there's no point in hitting if you can't drink or shag.

He's just made himself comfortable in the autopsy bay when he hears a shriek of laughter and Ianto's voice saying, "Jack! That's cheating!"

Jack's response is a low rumble that Owen can't hear, and despite himself, he peers out from the autopsy bay. Jack and Ianto are liplocked, now, and don't look like they'll be emerging anytime soon.

Owen creeps back down, and turns on his iPod so he doesn't have to hear them and wonders if maybe he did make a mistake not even trying after Katie.

Now that's settled, I can mention how ridiculously unsure I am about this fic. I actually like Owen a lot, but I always worry I screw him up.


End file.
